For those that are not familiar with Team Concert, this is the coolest thing since sliced bread. It is THE tool for software development project planning, management, source code management and more. Here is a general overview of the features. In our organization we use the RTC ExpressC version for our clients. This is a small team version that is free and includes 3 free client access licenses – perfect for our small team.

If you do not currently use version control (a.k.a. source code management- SCM), this is an ideal product to start with. Yes, there is Subversion, which is a good open source product, but it does NOT do all the features that Team Concert does. SCM is only a part of Team Concert’s features.

UPDATE MAY 2016: This is a bit of an old article, but RTC 6.0.2 is was released this month by IBM. Visit our CLM page for details, or call us for product pricing, or implementation services.

Absolutely. A HATS project is really just another Java EE project. Actually when I get a company started on HATS I usually introduce the RTC Express C if there is no version control system in place (this is the free version). What kind of HATS project are you working on?

Here's one tip I'll give you for HATS, and this applies to any version control system you use with it. There is a file in the project that is nothing more than a time stamp. Its under WEB-INFresourceUpdate.sts. Right click on it "Team>Add to Ignore List" for RTC. Subversion and ClearCase have similar ignore lists. Otherwise, this file will drive you nuts trying to keep it synchronized.

For ClearCase, you need to use the ClearCase Remote Client rather than the full client version, and I've had success using it on HATS projects in the past. That said, I personally don't care for ClearCase (and I'm a Rational reseller). RTC is MUCH easier for version control, plus it gives you all the additional features (agile planning, work item tracking, dashboarding, etc).

Yes. All of the above. It has a native repository which you can use out of the box. You can also import from Subversion or ClearCase into the native repository, or you can use Subversion or ClearCase as your repository rather than the native repository if you choose. It has hooks for those products built in.

The platform is built on Jazz whose concept is like eclipse. It's a base platform designed to be integrated into other repositories as well as other work item or bug tracking systems. It has work item tracking built in, but could connect to bugzilla, jira, or ClearQuest. It also integrates into instant messaging systems. I have mine integrated with GTalk.

Alex, RTC is much more than scm. It handles agile planning, work item tracking, project dashboards, team awareness, and automated builds – features that ClearCase does not have at all. That said, comparing just the SCM capabilities of the two products there are several differences. RTC is a more centralized server. ClearCase is a designed to be distributed across multiple servers yet act as one physical system to the user.

In my opinion, if you are just starting out, start out with RTC. Unless you have a very large, globally distributed development team with team clusters in various regions, ClearCase is overkill. However, if you are already on ClearCase, RTC makes a very nice addition as there is a ClearCase SCM bridge that allows you to manage work items and associate those with change sets in CC. This gives you traceability between the work items (which may be requirements, bugs, defects, tasks, enhancements, etc) and the group of code changes that are required (called change sets).

From the standpoint of administration, RTC is MUCH easier to administer. ClearCase requires a dedicated sys admin – someone who knows the commands to manage the VOBs and Views (storage elements and associated access to the elements). With RTC, the admin requirement can be is significantly less as all team members can contribute and a project manager can handle permissions using the GUI rather than command lines.

You’ve outsourced your application development. How do you keep intellectual control of your applications?

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